When drinking water and it “goes down the wrong pipe” is that water entering your airways? And if so, how does it go away?
In: 1309
Like others have said, coughing is the main thing, but our lungs are pretty moist anyway, so from my understanding if theres a little bit of water that isn’t coughed up, our lungs are capable of absorbing it. Just too much water means no room for oxygen so to speak (drowning).
This gives a good oppertunity though to explain the other big issue with inhaling or ‘Aspiring’ stuff that isn’t air, really the biggest issue assuming whatever your inhaling isn’t obstructing oxygen intake, is that it isn’t sterile: it can have bacteria and pathogens which our lungs really don’t want. Like *really* don’t want; it’s why they have so many mechanisms to stop pathogens getting that far like mucous (that stuff you want to cough up/swallow every so often) and hairs (not hair hair, but verrrrry small hair like cells called cilia) which constantly Mexican wave the mucous and pathogens away from the lungs. But anyway, if significant amounts of pathogen make it past those defenses because say, you inhaled too much water and couldn’t cough enough out, you could risk ‘aspiration pneumonia’ which as it sounds, is pneumonia (a lung infection) caused by aspirating something.
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